Any member who agrees with me, please post below.
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If they donât people are going to start voting with their feet and wallets. Once they leave, it will hard or near impossible to draw them back in.
waiting to see what C-Pod decides to doâŚ
Tick⌠tickâŚticâŚ
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Definitely.
January 2018 gave us 4 lessons in standard format. The subscription for Feb 2018 should cost $0.01 (exactly as the trial option) for all members who pay.
Just imagine that Netflix would give you access to the old library only without posting new content.
Time is up.
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I disagree. Now I am not an advanced user, so maybe you have a different set of problems, but I have plenty of material to keep me busy without a new lesson every week. I got study here for years and not run out!
I also disagree. As much as I liked the new content, thereâs already something like 1000 hours of content on this website. That should be enough (and has been enough for Newbie, Beginner, and Intermediate levels for me). Iâm content to wait, and keep working on old lessons
Disagree also. Nothing should be free. Iâve been using this site for atleast 2 years consistently and Iâm at the point where I could easily do without it, much of my progress has been due to Chinese pod. Thereâs enough lessons to get fluent as it is. I can wait, dig into the older lessons, or go over ones I studied previously. Iâm good.
It would be a nice gesture to tack on an extra month or two for however long it takes to get back up to speed, or perhaps give the basic subscribers a temporary free upgrade to premium, which in theory would not involve a cash cost to CPod. That said, if you look at Popup Chinese, (which interestingly has common ancestry with CPod) they havenât created new content in years and they are still charging for membership if you want the extra learning aides. Unless you have been with CPod for years and done almost all of the old lessons (or at least the ones relevant to you) AND were only renewing your subscription to get the fresh content itâs hard to argue that you are getting zero value. If that is your situation you could probably contact them directly and get a refund. You could always come back later when things are looking more satisfactory.
By the way, is YuQinCai also gone from CPod? I havenât seen her replies to any questions since like November.
One of the farewell posts on Instagram had her picture on it as well. I guess she jumped ship also. Lol.
I thought they said there was enough content to keep it going until they found new people. To be honest I hadnât been paying attention as Iâve been busy with school lately, but after reading some of the posts it seems like itâs slowed up. Iâm probably just going to download a bunch of lessons and call it day.
Hey @podster , I know youâve been at it for a while now, do you still feel the need for lessons? If not, is there any other reason why you still use them?
Nabeshima,
I hardly ever sit down and study an entire lesson anymore. But I use CPod when I happen to need some odd situational language so I can prepare in advance by going through the archives and finding related content. I was also volunteer teaching English to native Chinese speakers and sort of âreverse-engineeredâ some of the newbie and elementary dialogues rather than relying on my own translations.
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Maybe it was wrong to say paying for nothing - the archived lessons are fantastic, but itâs not the whole service that you pay your subscription for. In that case why have any more new lessons at all if youâre just happy with the archive.
I find it quite strange that customers are willing to offer a profit making company more of their money for less service.
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dropped_chopstick,
This is the conundrum for the company. To create one more lesson at this point they are only expanding the library by a minuscule amount, yet the cost may be similar as the average for all previous lessons. Still many subscribers perceive the value proposition as being getting fresh content. Personally I am mostly interested in topics that couldnât have been discussed at the inception of ChinesePod (e.g.: Belt and Road Initiative, Bitcoin) so I do agree with you that fresh content is an important part of the value of a subscription.
Thank you for all your comments here. We appreciate all points of view.
Over the years ChinesePod has changed in multiple ways, adding new hosts, new styles, new media (there was a time that we only had audio files and now we have both) and more. We are reviewing the success of the past products and are making a substantial investment in the future. Unfortunately, it does take some time and resources. We are hopeful that you will find new content in the 4000 lessons we have. We understand the value of fresh content and are ready to start previewing to a select group of users. If you are interested in giving feedback on our direction, please email learningconsultant@chinesepod.com with the subject line: âI want to helpâ or âWÇ xiÇng bÄngmĂĄngr ććłĺ¸Žĺżäşşâ and you will receive an invitation to the closed group, NewPodMovement. Here you will be able to see some of the upcoming lesson formats and give us your feedback.
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I donât think thatâs quite the case here. When I said I donât think it should be free, itâs coming from the position of someone who has successfully used this service for years, with not much to complain about. Itâs more of being patient out of respect for the fact that this hasnât happened before and I have been a satisfied customer up to this point. When you build a quality product/service your consumers are loyal. I wouldnât expect that same loyalty from someone who just signed up recently. At the end of the day, you could have always signed up for one month, pillaged the library for as many lessons as you needed and kept it moving. So I donât find it strange at all.
Itâs not that I think they should stop making content, itâs that I am willing to be patient. They are already having problems and probably extra costs due to the transition. This isnât Microsoft or some other big company weâre talking about. If you start making unreasonable demands to a small company (like having their product for free) you can drive them out of business. So Iâm willing to continue paying for all the content and convenience they give me, and wait for them to work things out. Iâm here for the long haul anyways
Chinesepod should extend with no charges
Puwanat
Is it possible you are conflating the service with the presenters? I owe my Chinese to John and Jenny for sure and subsequent presenters become like friends as you listen to the lessons every day. But they are not the company. They are employees. And absolutely fantastic.
But
The company is something completely separate. It also has gone through at least 2 if not 3 owners - and a few mini scandals in which the presenters were perhaps not treated as fairly as they should. So my loyalties are with the presenters not the company,
When I renewed in December the professional response from the team would have been - well in January we are going to have a change of presenters and there will be a hiatus in shows produced for maybe a month or two - do you still want to subscribe?
Or when the hiatus started - dear subscriber we will have a delay of xx weeks months before new lessons, weâd like to apologise and offer you an extension or discount for an extension.
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That is the most logical argument I have seen on this thread to date.
I renewed my annual subscription on December 24, which moved me from nearly being skint to completely broke (Thank you Christmas), in the hope that Chinesepod would continue to operate as per normal.
When I saw that no new content was added for an extended period of time, I grew rather discontent. This sentiment was also expressed by other members within the Chinesepod forum.
Since there was a complete freeze on the production of new content, I emailed the ChinesePod team directly to ask them what would be done to compensate people in my position, who bought an annual subscription without being aware of ChinesePodâs current situation. The response they basically gave was âwe hope you can find enough content in our 4,000+ lesson library,â which is tantamount to saying âtough shit.â
I know, how dare I trust a company that is supposed to update its content and, you know, do its jobâŚ
From an ethical and a business point of view, this is completely unacceptable. I downloaded most of the former lessons under my previous subscription, so the reason I renewed was for new content. This insolent response unfortunately reeks of ineptitude and a complete unwillingness to do what is right on the part of the team.
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Exactly. Apart from the conversation on what we spend, I would appreciate a succinct message from the company as to what is going on here. Before I started reading this thread, I assumed that maybe someone was on holiday/etc. Or whatever.
Now it seems I am hearing about maybe some of the presenters are gone but I donât see any official news from the ChinesePod. The one post from ChinesePod does not actually tell us anything.
Can âthe companyâ take responsibility and tell us what is going on? I donât think I, a paying customer should be responsible for trying to help you figure out what the new direction should be. Frankly, âI DONâT want to helpâ. I just want to know what I am supposed to be getting for my money. And if it is âno new content for nowâ, fine. I can live with that.
Just tell us and we can then make decisions around what the value of continuing our subscription is.
Thanks-ck
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Sorry to hear about your experience. Obviously I was wrong when I suggested above that CPod would be willing to work with anyone in your position that contacted them individually. Caveat emptor. 
100% agree with your point about âThe Companyâ taking responsibility for this. The worst part was, we didnât find out about Fiona and the rest of the team leaving ChinesePod through an official company announcement, but through a blog post here (I donât have an Instagram account, so I was not aware of Fiona announcing it there ---- Talk about me being a throwback to a bygone era).
Some official explanation, announcing what happened and what they are doing to rectify the situation would be greatly appreciated. In this case, unfortunately, I donât only smell a rat, but a rat that died under the floorboard while you were away on holiday.
Furthermore, the fact that they are looking for direction from the customers at this juncture is surely indicative of the company not having a clue of what they are doing. Competent companies (love alliteration) have contingency plans in place for things like these, rather than evidently scratching their backs, humming and hawing, thinking âuuuuummmmmmmmmmmm, what do we do now?â
Anyway, the only good thing is that I firmly believe that they have scraped the bottom of the barrel labeled âexcusesâ, so I think they might start to give us, the paying customers, some solid information about what is happening.
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